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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Shakhidat
Baymuradova, a rifle slung on her back, fought alongside her husband
in the ranks of Chechen rebels until he was killed by Russian troops
in 1999.

This month, her
hair tucked in a hijab or Muslim headscarf, she strapped explosives
to her waist and blew herself up at a Muslim festival where pro-Moscow
officials had gathered. At least 16 people were killed.

Baymuradova, 46, whose
first name translates as "martyrdom" in Arabic, was the
latest in a string of female suicide bombers to strike in Chechnya
over the past year -- a frightening new form of rebel action in a decade-old
conflict.

Women have traditionally
been excluded from the fighting that has razed Chechnya, on Russia's
southern fringe. Suicide attacks were almost
unheard of in the first years of fighting.

But the "black
widows" have become a new threat to Moscow,
already shaken by almost daily losses.

Baymuradova's suicide
attack on May 14 -- an assassination attempt on a top pro-Moscow official
who in the end escaped unhurt -- also killed her woman accomplice.

Two days earlier,
another woman was part of an attack in the region's usually peaceful
North, driving a truck packed with explosives into a government complex.

"We are witnessing
an escalation of the violence in Chechnya," said Salambek Maigov,
a rebel envoy to Moscow.

"Seeing
that Moscow's promises are empty, people are taking extreme measures.
The Kremlin has finally lost control of the situation in Chechnya."

"BLACK
WIDOWS"

Kremlin officials
dismiss the women, saying they act in isolation, bankrolled
by mercenaries.

They say a March referendum,
which showed overwhelming popular support for Chechnya remaining part
of Russia, showed the region is on track for Moscow's peace plan which
calls for elections for a regional president and assembly.

"All terrorist acts
committed by kamikaze suicide bombers are organized by Arab mercenaries,"
Ilya Shabalkin, a spokesman for Russia's anti-terrorist operations in
Chechnya, said after Baymuradova's attack. "They use this same
tactic in Israel."

But Chechen
rebel leaders describe the attacks as the illustration of widespread
despair in the region,where they say the much-publicized
vote has had little impact on real life.

"I cannot see any
religious meaning behind these actions," rebel envoy Akhmad Zakayev
said by telephone from London. "They
spring from a desire for revenge."

Kheda Yusupova, from
the village of Urus-Martan southwest of the Chechen capital Grozny,
said grief made women easy prey.
"These women are motivated only by vengeance, and the rebels use
this," Yusupova told Reuters. "It is only revenge. All
the rewards on this earth are irrelevant for a person burdened with
grief."

The first major suicide
attack in the region came in June 2000, early in Russia's second campaign
to contain separatist fighters in the region.

Two women drove a truck
crammed with explosives into a police building -- one was Khava Barayeva,
a relative of guerrilla leader Movsar Barayev who orchestrated last
year's siege of a Moscow theater in which 129 people died.

Barayeva's attack was
so novel that it was recorded in song by one of Chechnya's most popular
artists.

The idea that women could
fight for the Chechen cause did not hit home for most Russians, however,
until the Moscow siege.

Several young women fighters
appeared on footage aired on national television after Russian special
forces ended the siege with a powerful gas before shooting the rebels.
[TVOTW Insert - The
majority of the dead killed by Putin were innocent Russian hostages.]

Their faces covered by
the Muslim hijab, they lolled dead in their seats. Most, said hostages
who had spoken to them during the siege, had lost men in the war.

In a refugee camp in
Ingushetia, on Chechnya's western border, another refugee, who refused
to give her name, said four of her sons had been captured in Russian
raids.

"I
have only one son now, who is 11. He thinks only of avenging his brothers,"
she said. "Sometimes I would also like
to blow myself up in the middle of a group of Russian soldiers. I would
not be sorry for them."

WARLORDS
BENEFIT

Zakayev, a spokesman
for Chechnya's fugitive separatist President Aslan Maskhadov, said there
would be more bombings as extreme factions of Chechnya's separatist
movement -- including warlord Shamil Basayev -- gained prominence.

"We have said we
are ready to talk without conditions," Zakayev said. "Basayev
says Chechnya can only be freed through war."

(In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed
without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving
the included information for research and educational purposes.)

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